05/13/03: (Information
Clearing House) While the hawks in the Bush administration attempt
to justify the logic behind a preemptive strike against Iraq now that
its become clear the country’s alleged weapons of mass destruction are
nowhere to be found, the true reasons for going to war are finally
coming to light.

In his State of the
Union address in January, President Bush said intelligence reports from
the CIA and the FBI indicated that Saddam Hussein “had the materials
to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent,”
which put the United States in imminent danger of possibly being
attacked sometime in the future.

Two months later,
despite no concrete evidence from intelligence officials or United
Nations inspectors that these weapons existed, Bush authorized the use
of military force to decimate the country and destroy Saddam Hussein’s
regime.

Now it appears the
weapons of mass destruction will never be found and many critics of the
war are starting to wonder aloud whether the community was duped by the
Bush administration.

Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, both
of who spent a better part of the past decade advocating the use of
military force against Iraq, put the issue to rest once and for all.

Judging by recent
interviews Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz gave to a handful of media outlets
during the past week, the short answer is yes, the public was mislead
into believing Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States.
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz admit that the war with Iraq was planned two days
after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

On September13, 2001,
during a meeting at Camp David with President Bush, Rumsfeld and others
in the Bush administration, Wolfowitz said he discussed with President
Bush the prospects of launching an attack against Iraq, for no apparent
reason other than a “gut feeling” Saddam Hussein was involved in the
attacks, and there was a debate “about what place if any Iraq should
have in a counter terrorist strategy.”

“On the surface of
the debate it at least appeared to be about not whether but when,”
Wolfowitz said during the May 9 interview, a transcript of which is
posted on the Department of Defense website www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030509-depsecdef0223.html.
“There seemed to be a kind of agreement that yes it should be, but the
disagreement was whether it should be in the immediate response or
whether you should concentrate simply on Afghanistan first.”

Wolfowitz said it was
clear that because Saddam Hussein “praised” the terrorist attacks on
9-11 that besides Afghanistan, Iraq went to the top of the list of
countries the United States expected to launch an attack against in the
near future.

“To the extent it was
a debate about tactics and timing, the President clearly came down on
the side of Afghanistan first. To the extent it was a debate about
strategy and what the larger goal was, it is at least clear with 20/20
hindsight that the President came down on the side of the larger
goal.”

In an interview with
WABC-TV last week, Rumsfeld took it a step further saying United States
policy advocated regime change in Iraq since the 1990s and that was also
a reason behind the war in Iraq.

“If you go back and
look at the debate in the Congress and the debate in the United Nations,
what we said was the President said that this is a dangerous regime, the
policy of the United States government has been regime change since the
mid to late 1990s…and that regime has now been changed. That is a very good
thing,” Rumsfeld said during the interview, a transcript of which can
be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/2003/tr20030527-secdef0228.html

Rumfeld’s response is
only partly true. He and Wolfowitz, along with Vice President Dick
Cheney and others in the administration, wrote to President Clinton in
1998 urging regime change in Iraq but Clinton rebuffed them saying his
administration was focusing on dismantling al-Qaeda cells.

In the bigger picture,
Iraqis are better off without Saddam Hussein, who ruled the country with
an iron fist, torturing and murdering any citizen who spoke against his
regime. But that’s beside the point. The issue is the Bush
administration lied to the world and launched an unjustifiable war.

And it’s just the
beginning of a so-called two front war the U.S. is planning against
other “outlaw” regimes. The administration is ratcheting up the
rhetoric on Iran by making similar allegations that this country too
poses a threat to national security by harboring al-Qaeda terrorists and
building a nuclear arms arsenal.

Serious disagreements
exist between the State Department and the Bush administration on how to
deal with Iran, with the State Department pushing for an open dialogue
and the Bush administration pushing for a new regime.

In a half a dozen
interviews last week, Rumsfeld refused to respond to questions about
whether the U.S. will use military force to overthrow Iran’s governing
body.

“That’s (military
force) up to the President but the fact is that to the extent that Iran
attempts to influence what’s taking place in Iraq and tries to make
Iraq into their image, we will have to stop it. And to the extent
they have people from their Revolutionary Guard in they’re attempting
to do that, why we’ll have to find them and capture them or kill
them,” Rumsfeld said in an interview last week with WCBS-TV.

Wolfowitz, however, is
more direct in how to deal with Iran. Responding to the question of
whether military force will be used to weed out the clerics running the
country, Wolfowitz said in an interview with CNN International Saturday
“you know, I think you know, we never rule out that kind of thing.”